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After a week of research, problems, crashes and clockspeeds that won't apply, i finally found the way to overclock this baby!

WARNING:

NEVER, EVER ,FLASH THE VBIOSES IN THIS GUIDE BEFORE YOU'VE READEN THIS WHOLE GUIDE!

I'M NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE ON YOUR MACHINE , DYING BIRDS OR ALIEN ATTACKS!

So, you want to crank up your 8970M? Just follow the following steps in this guide to unlock it's full potential!

Step 1:

Uninstall every overclock program for your gpu like msi afterburner or sapphire trixx. If you don't do this you may get some interference and get some strange problems.

Step 2:

Because we are going to overclock we are going to need a unlocked power limit control. I made 3 vbioses, which are in the attachements, that have an unlocked power power limit that goes up to +50% and can be controlled with software and 2 of them also have a higher stock voltage programmed. You can choose between:

None of these bioses have a dangerous voltage, you can run these voltages 24/7 without problem if your temperatures allow it.

Now you have to flash one of these vbioses, you can choose which one you want. The voltage can also be changed with software so you don't have to be afraid that you've chosen a vbios with a too low voltage to start with.

Step 3:

Now you've chosen a vbios you have to flash it, the program we are going to use is atiflash. (Don't use atiwinflash)

This program will only run in DOS which is pretty nice because in dos there aren't program's that can ruin your vbios flash by blocking the program or just block it half way the vbios flash. But now we need to get a dos environment to get this program running, well that's pretty easy with the following tool:

-HP USB Format Tool

This tool can format your usb and put a dos environment in it which is bootable. For this you need the following files from the attachements:

-HP USB Format Tool

-Win 98 Boot files

When you've downloaded them you have to install the HP USB Format tool and unpack the win98 boot files zip. After you've done that you put in your usb in your laptop and open the HP USB Format Tool. Then you have got to configure the HP USB Format Tool to format your usb the right way so it has the dos environment. These are the settings:

- Format as FAT32

- Tick the "Quick Format" box

- Tick the "Create a DOS startup disk"

- Browse to the folder where the win98 boot files are in so it can create the dos environment with those files

- Click on "start"

Now you've succesfully formatted your usb stick with the bootable dos environment. Now you have got to download atiflash from the attachement and unpack the .zip Rename the .exe to atiflash and copy it to the root of your usb stick with the dos environment. You've also got to copy your selected bios file to the root of your usb. After that you will have the following things on your usb:

-Bootable DOS environment files

-Atiflash.exe

-Thames.rom (the vbios)

Now you have to restart your laptop and boot from the usb, you will shortly see a win98 boot screen and then you are in a simple dos environment.

First, we want to check if you are flashing the vbios to the right card, so we use the following command:

atiflash -i <gpu number="">

So i have only one gpu, so i will use the following command to check if i'm flashing the right gpu:

atiflash -i 0

0 is the number of the first gpu, but you always got to check it before you are going to flash. And if it's not gpu number 0, you can try gpu number 1 or 2 or even 3

So after we determined which gpu number is the right number we will use the following command to flash the gpu:

atiflash -p <gpu number=""> <bios file="">

So i have only one gpu and the bios file is called Thames.rom so i will use the following command:

atiflash -p 0 Thames.rom

That's it, you just flashed a new vbios in your 8970M!

Step 4:

Unplug your usb and boot in windows. You need to disable ulps before you can overclock, otherwise the card will just keep his stock clock when you are overclocking which you don't want

To disable ulps you have to open regedit, open the search menu in regedit with ctrl+f and put in the search box: ulps

Now you've got to set every registery key with ulps in it to 0 Because 0=off and 1=on and we want to turn of ulps.

Step 5:

Now we can get to the software part. First you download msi afterburner from the attachement and install it.

Now you have got to right click on the MSI Afterburner shortcut and go to properties. Now you've got to add the command -xcl to the target like this:

Default:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\MSI Afterburner\MSIAfterburner.exe"

</bios></gpu></gpu>

With -xcl

"C:\Program Files (x86)\MSI Afterburner\MSIAfterburner.exe" -xcl

After you have done this you can launch msi afterburner, if it launches you can close it again and if it doesn't want to lauch (you click on the shortcut and nothing happens) it's also okay. This command will let MSI Afterburner change some registery keys and things so software voltage control is unlocked. The only thing is that MSI Afterburner doesn't support the vrm's on the 8970M so we will delete it again, we only needed it for the changes to the registery.

Step 6:

Now we have unlocked software voltage control and unlocked tdp control. We only need a program that supports the vrm's and can change the core clock, power limit and voltage. And there is such a program, Sapphire Trixx!

You've got to download it from the attachement and install it. When you open it you will get the following settings in the overclock menu:

-Core clock control

-Memory clock control

-VDDC control (the voltage control)

-power limit control

You can change everything except for the memory clock, if you change it for only 1 mhz your card will crash. Every 8970M has that problem and i think that it's a overclock protection or something like that.

So well, here you've got it. Now you can clock your 8970M to the overclockers hell

Don't flash these bioses on any other laptop than Clevo laptops

The max voltage i recommend for 24/7 is 1.075V, you can go higher but i wouldn't recommend it for 24/7

But you can only run on your overclocked settings with ulps disabled. And if you disable ulps your 8970M won't turn off anymore so your battery life is ruïned. To fix this you have to do:

Find the core clock/power limit/voltage setting that you prefer and post them in this thread. I can make a bios with those settings in it so you don't have to run any software and you can enable ulps again because the setting are now in the vbios file so the gpu loads them from the vbios, and not from the software.

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Well actually there is a performance drop after raising the voltage with trixx. Lowering it back down fixes the performance drop. Even setting 1mV higher results in a drop, with higher being more severe.

My voltage is already set to 1.1V in BIOS, but I've heard of 1.125V working fine so this seems strange.

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That's nice to see! Could you change the memory clock with software or would it freeze immediately? I can't use amd overdrive (stupid catalyst) so i don't know how to fix that problem. What i do have is when i change my 3d voltage from 1.025 volt to 1.050 volt, gpu-z stil says that my voltage is 1.025 volt. But when i change the voltage to 1.075 volt, gpu-z says that i'm running on 1.075volt. It's a bit tricky and buggy but wel... I'm now 15 years old and i try to develop some nice tweaks for this hardware but i can't do rocketscience.

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Hi all , I got my 8970m core clock to 1021mhz and memory at 1250mhz any higher and my computer locks up with black screen I seem to get better results with msi 3000 beta than trixs I'm using power limit set to 15%

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I did some more testing on my 7970m, and it turns out that Trixx does work at raising the voltage too. I tried going over 1.1V via BIOS mod, and it had the same problems as when I tried going over with trixx. This means that I am hitting a power limit. How did you raise your power limit in the 8970m BIOS?

Update:

Figured it out. You used VBE7 to enable a 50% TDP increase slider. I tried the same for the 7970m, and while the slider appeared in Trixx, it didn't do anything. What did work was setting the TDP values directly. I eliminated the TDP range and fixed the TDP to 125W, and my fps drops disappeared.